Olav Toreson Beito (March 30, 1901 – September 28, 1989) was a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

linguist and professor of Nordic studies at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

. Beito was born in

Øystre Slidre Øystre Slidre is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Valdres. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Heggenes. Other villages in the municipality include Hegge, Ro ...

,Venås, Kjell. 2009. Beito, Olav T. In: Stammerjohann, Harro (ed.), ''Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics'' p. 126. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. the son of the farmer Thore Andreas Beito (1849–1937) and Marit Beito (1858–1932).''Norsk biografisk leksikon'': Olav T. Beito
He married Marit Eker in 1930. Beito earned his ''

candidatus philologiæ Candidatus philologiae (male) or Candidata philologiae (female), often abbreviated cand.philol. is an academic degree in Arts and Letters at Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A nati ...

'' degree in 1932 from the University of Oslo, and then taught at schools in

Fredrikstad Fredrikstad (; previously ''Frederiksstad''; literally "Fredrik's Town") is a city and municipality in Viken county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Fredrikstad. The city of Fredrikstad was founded in ...

and

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

. From 1936 to 1939 and in 1948 he taught at the University of Oslo. He received a doctorate in 1942 with a dissertation on ''r''-

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

consonant stems. He taught Norwegian at the

University of Iceland The University of Iceland ( is, Háskóli Íslands ) is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servant ...

from 1954 to 1955. He was appointed a

docent The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de conf ...

in Nordic studies in 1957, and a professor in 1959. Beito published ''Norske sæternamn'' (Norwegian Mountain Dairy Farm Names) in 1949 for the

Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture ( no, Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning) is a humanities research institute based in Oslo, Norway. It was established in 1922 by Fredrik Stang. An independent institute, its task ...

; the work covered about 50,00 such names. His study of gender shifts in

Nynorsk Nynorsk () () is one of the two written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language ( no, Landsmål) parallel to the Dano-No ...

determined the ratio between masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. He edited a number of publications in the series ''Skrifter frå norsk målførearkiv'' (Texts from the Norwegian Dialect Archives) and published the collection ''Norske målføretekster'' (Norwegian Dialect Texts) in 1963, followed by the collection ''Artiklar og talar i utval'' (Selected Articles and Lectures) in 1979. His 1970 Nynorsk grammar (second edition 1986) was the first such work after the one written by

Ivar Aasen Ivar Andreas Aasen (; 5 August 1813 – 23 September 1896) was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright, and poet. He is best known for having assembled one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, Nynorsk, from ...

. He resided at Jar and died in Oslo.

Distinctions

Beito was made a member of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Unive ...

in 1951.

Selected works

*''R-bøygning: etterrøknader i norsk formlære'' (R-Declension: An Investigation of Norwegian Morphology, 1942) *''Norske sæternamn'' (Norwegian Mountain Dairy Farm Names, 1949) *''Genusskifte i nynorsk'' (Gender Shifts in Nynorsk, 1954) *''Norske målføretekster'' (Norwegian Dialect Texts, 1963) *''Nynorsk grammatikk: Lyd- og ordlære'' (Nynorsk Grammar: Phonology and Vocabulary, 1970) *''Artiklar og talar i utval'' (Selected Articles and Lectures, 1979)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beito, Olav 1901 births 1989 deaths People from Valdres University of Oslo alumni Norwegian schoolteachers Linguists from Norway Norwegian expatriates in Iceland Academic staff of the University of Oslo Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters 20th-century linguists